You are acting in accordance with a worldview, which has been transmitted to you from your family and friends, from your church or your spiritual community, from your teachers in school and from the marketing and mass media industry. You are a puppet connected to many strings.
You are a Muslim or a Jew, a Protestant or a Buddhist, a free market liberal or a neo-Nazi…
You try to talk in a way that you believe you should talk and you try to think in a way that you believe you should think. You dress up in a way you think you should dress up and you conduct yourself in a way you think you should conduct yourself.
It is not your will, but your mother’s will, your friend’s will, your husband’s will, your teacher‘s will, your...
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Illusions
The sun does not sink down behind the horizon.
It is the earth that is turning.
And rainbows do not exist
if no one is there to behold them.
Things are not what they seem to be.
You are not what you think you are.
We have misunderstood and misinterpreted most things in life.
I don’t write these words.
Scientists have discovered that the brain processes that trigger an action
for example, when I am pressing a key on a key board,
begin more than half a second before I consciously decide to act.
We have no free will according to modern brain science.
We have no Self that is responsible for our actions.
Nevertheless, you can see the rainbow clearly
and it goes without saying that you are accountable for your actions,
the whole of you, not just the imaginary part of you that you call your Self.
Of course we have a free will.
We can easily be deluded, yes,
and other people can stop us from doing what we want,
but the will is there and it is very real.
The Self does not exist in the same way that physical objects exist.
It cannot be weighed or measured.
Activity in certain brain centers can be measured, when we do something,
think about something or look at something.
However, there are no particular brain cells
that gives rise to the sense of “I am here”.
The self is like a rainbow
and rainbows do exist.
The idea that the Self is an illusion, is a delusion
and the idea that the Self is something real and permanent
is also a delusion.
However, to ponder over these things is a waste of time.
The world is in total chaos and disorder,
war, pollution, exploitation, starvation, religious madness…
And you care only about your Self.
You should ask yourself if you have been fooled
or if you have fooled yourself.
It is the earth that is turning.
And rainbows do not exist
if no one is there to behold them.
Things are not what they seem to be.
You are not what you think you are.
We have misunderstood and misinterpreted most things in life.
I don’t write these words.
Scientists have discovered that the brain processes that trigger an action
for example, when I am pressing a key on a key board,
begin more than half a second before I consciously decide to act.
We have no free will according to modern brain science.
We have no Self that is responsible for our actions.
Nevertheless, you can see the rainbow clearly
and it goes without saying that you are accountable for your actions,
the whole of you, not just the imaginary part of you that you call your Self.
Of course we have a free will.
We can easily be deluded, yes,
and other people can stop us from doing what we want,
but the will is there and it is very real.
The Self does not exist in the same way that physical objects exist.
It cannot be weighed or measured.
Activity in certain brain centers can be measured, when we do something,
think about something or look at something.
However, there are no particular brain cells
that gives rise to the sense of “I am here”.
The self is like a rainbow
and rainbows do exist.
The idea that the Self is an illusion, is a delusion
and the idea that the Self is something real and permanent
is also a delusion.
However, to ponder over these things is a waste of time.
The world is in total chaos and disorder,
war, pollution, exploitation, starvation, religious madness…
And you care only about your Self.
You should ask yourself if you have been fooled
or if you have fooled yourself.
You should ask yourself why you are fighting so hard to defend your delusions.
You should ask yourself why other people are fighting so hard
to defend their delusions.
Your religion is not the only religion here on this planet.
Your political ideology is not the only one.
You should ask yourself why other people are fighting so hard
to defend their delusions.
Your religion is not the only religion here on this planet.
Your political ideology is not the only one.
What if your religion or your political ideas are just mind stuff
that you have picked up from other people.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Animism
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with a diameter of 100 000 light-years.
400 billion stars, planets, boulders and gravel
rotating around a super massive black hole,
like a hurricane of rocks.
This hurricane of rocks
has in some mysterious way
given rise to us.
We are a hurricane of rocks that thinks and feel,
conscious rock that is dreaming strange dreams at night.
400 billion stars, planets, boulders and gravel
rotating around a super massive black hole,
like a hurricane of rocks.
This hurricane of rocks
has in some mysterious way
given rise to us.
We are a hurricane of rocks that thinks and feel,
conscious rock that is dreaming strange dreams at night.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
The four ignoble truths
1. Life consists of so much suffering, pain, misery, illness, hardship and injustice. Life can of course also contain many pleasant moments, but eventually we will all have to face suffering, old age, disease and death. Life is a struggle for survival but no one survives. It is not a matter of survival of the fittest. All life forms are a food source for other life forms, predators, parasites and saprophytes.
2. Suffering would not exist unless there was someone who suffered, a conscious being who tried to escape the suffering.
3. There are ways to escape suffering.
4. The different ways to escape suffering can support and reinforce each other, and they can be used in different stages of life. Alcohol, drugs and painkillers; career plans, hard work and life improvement programs; daydreams, stand up comedy and politics; philosophy, science and religion; physical training, meditation and art; shopping, interior decoration and gardening; soap operas, computer games and detective stories… You have to find a way that works for you.
Whatever you do, do not try to see all aspects of reality. To see the world as it is, is not helpful.
2. Suffering would not exist unless there was someone who suffered, a conscious being who tried to escape the suffering.
3. There are ways to escape suffering.
4. The different ways to escape suffering can support and reinforce each other, and they can be used in different stages of life. Alcohol, drugs and painkillers; career plans, hard work and life improvement programs; daydreams, stand up comedy and politics; philosophy, science and religion; physical training, meditation and art; shopping, interior decoration and gardening; soap operas, computer games and detective stories… You have to find a way that works for you.
Whatever you do, do not try to see all aspects of reality. To see the world as it is, is not helpful.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Are synchronicities illusions
Some phenomena are so rare that they cannot be studied scientifically. However, this does not mean that they do not occur.
For example, suppose you have experienced something very strange and want to tell about it. Maybe you have experienced an incredibly weird coincidence, a synchronicity. Those who have to listen to your story try to be polite, so they say, “How interesting,” Then they continue the conversation with another topic. They are clearly not interested in your story.
Other people react differently. They love synchronicities and experience them everyday. They explain to you what you have to do in order to experience paranormal phenomena more frequently. You can immediately hear that they don’t know much about synchronicities and that they have never had any such experiences. They have picked up what they know about it on the internet or in New Age books.
The internet and the New Age bookstores are teeming with information about synchronicities and paranormal phenomena. Most of this information is just nonsense. It is obviously very difficult for those who have never experienced any synchronicities to discriminate between true stories and delusions. It is therefore almost impossible to discuss these things with them.
Dean Radin and Russell Tarc have tried to prove scientifically that telepathy and remote viewing are not just fantasies. They used well-accepted scientific methods and advanced statistics to prove their case. They could show that most people have some kind of sixth sense and that some people have this sense more developed. I don’t know anything about scientific statistics and methods so I have to take their word for it. I am not able to judge if their mathematics and methods are flawed. However, those who know about mathematics and scientific methods seem to be in disagreement about their findings.
Synchronicities are even more difficult to study with scientific methods. My experience is that you cannot create them on demand. Such phenomenons cannot be reproduced in laboratories. Synchronicities are spontaneous and rare events and they are therefore impossible to study scientifically.
I know that synchronicities are real phenomena. I have experienced them myself, but I cannot prove that I am right. Of course, it’s possible that I have deceived myself, definitely. Illusions are common. But what if my synchronicity experiences are not illusions? And what if some of the many other synchronicity stories out there are also true stories? How shall we interpret these observations? How shall we sift the wheat from the chaff?
It’s a pity that there are so many nonsense discussions about these things in the so-called spiritual circles. It’s not possible to discuss synchronicity and telepathy with New Age people, not with religious people and of course not with scientifically minded people. It’s difficult to discuss these things with almost everybody.
This is the reason why sincere people who have experienced synchronicities and paranormal phenomena often avoid talking about them.
For example, suppose you have experienced something very strange and want to tell about it. Maybe you have experienced an incredibly weird coincidence, a synchronicity. Those who have to listen to your story try to be polite, so they say, “How interesting,” Then they continue the conversation with another topic. They are clearly not interested in your story.
Other people react differently. They love synchronicities and experience them everyday. They explain to you what you have to do in order to experience paranormal phenomena more frequently. You can immediately hear that they don’t know much about synchronicities and that they have never had any such experiences. They have picked up what they know about it on the internet or in New Age books.
The internet and the New Age bookstores are teeming with information about synchronicities and paranormal phenomena. Most of this information is just nonsense. It is obviously very difficult for those who have never experienced any synchronicities to discriminate between true stories and delusions. It is therefore almost impossible to discuss these things with them.
Dean Radin and Russell Tarc have tried to prove scientifically that telepathy and remote viewing are not just fantasies. They used well-accepted scientific methods and advanced statistics to prove their case. They could show that most people have some kind of sixth sense and that some people have this sense more developed. I don’t know anything about scientific statistics and methods so I have to take their word for it. I am not able to judge if their mathematics and methods are flawed. However, those who know about mathematics and scientific methods seem to be in disagreement about their findings.
Synchronicities are even more difficult to study with scientific methods. My experience is that you cannot create them on demand. Such phenomenons cannot be reproduced in laboratories. Synchronicities are spontaneous and rare events and they are therefore impossible to study scientifically.
I know that synchronicities are real phenomena. I have experienced them myself, but I cannot prove that I am right. Of course, it’s possible that I have deceived myself, definitely. Illusions are common. But what if my synchronicity experiences are not illusions? And what if some of the many other synchronicity stories out there are also true stories? How shall we interpret these observations? How shall we sift the wheat from the chaff?
It’s a pity that there are so many nonsense discussions about these things in the so-called spiritual circles. It’s not possible to discuss synchronicity and telepathy with New Age people, not with religious people and of course not with scientifically minded people. It’s difficult to discuss these things with almost everybody.
This is the reason why sincere people who have experienced synchronicities and paranormal phenomena often avoid talking about them.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
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